Page 111 of Can't Help Falling

“I already know about the birds and the bees.”

“Yeah, but these days the birds have high-speed internet access, and the bees like to convince you they’ll only think you’re cool if you send naked pics.”

“Oh, Jesus. Kill me, Lord. Just end this mortal misery.” She raised her face and palms to the sky, looking so sincere Tyler had to laugh.

“Stop that.” He slapped her palms back down to her sides. “Bad karma.”

“Karma? Jeez. Fin is really getting to you.”

Tyler’s mouth clapped shut. She had no idea.

“You’re blushing,” Kylie was kind enough to point out with her pointer finger an inch from his cheek. “Tyler, this leads me to one question and one question only. Have you been sexting?”

“No,” he snapped. “I have not.” Which was an oversight that he was quickly going to be rectifying. “And don’t change the subject.”

She sighed. “What do you want me to tell you? I watch Netflix, go on BuzzFeed, read manga and now I have like three friends who text me. I don’t even have a Snapchat, Ty. You lucked into the one teenager on earth who uses her phone like a grandma.”

“Grandma Nora used a rotary phone until the day she died, so she actually had you beat there.”

“Oh. Right.” Kylie looked momentarily perplexed. “I forgot how old you are. You actually knew her.”

Tyler cleared his throat as they waved at the doorman and got on the elevator, thankfully without an audience. “Well. Yeah. I’m glad to hear that you’re not using the internet for...sex stuff.”

Part of him wished the elevator cords would snap and just end this horror.

They stepped off onto his floor. “Ky...”

She stopped, her eyes on his feet, not on his face.

He cleared his throat again. “I hope you’ll talk to me if you ever have questions about this stuff. I mean, I’ll wear a ski mask, you’ll wear a ski mask, we’ll never have to look at each other’s faces, I swear.”

Thankfully, she laughed. “Tyler, I promise I’ll talk to someone, okay? Just...maybe not my older brother.”

The elevator dinged behind them as Tyler unlocked the door.

“Whoa,” Fin said, her arms full of groceries. “Hell of a vibe in this hallway.”

“It’s his fault,” Kylie said, pointing her thumb at Tyler. “Hi, Fin.”

Kylie ducked into the apartment and Tyler raced back toward Fin, taking the groceries and making sure the coast was clear before he kissed her cheek.

For some reason he didn’t understand, that made her blush. “What?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. “I just think it’s sweet that you go for the cheek kiss even after we...” She glanced toward the open living room door. “Never mind.”

He laughed and hauled everything inside. As he made dinner, he kept an ear perked toward Kylie’s room, where she and Fin were chatting easily about her trip. Kylie regaled Fin with the horrors of the sexting conversation she’d just had with Tyler. But Tyler didn’t mind. Mistakes are part of it, he reminded himself, holding Fin in his heart like a talisman.

Forty-five minutes later, the three of them sat down to broccoli chicken casserole, beers for Fin and Tyler, bread on the table. He let them continue their conversation without adding much. It was nice to hear Kylie chatter away, something she did more freely with Fin than she did with Ty. The disparity didn’t bother him. He hoped that this wasn’t any more a hierarchy for her than it was for him. It wasn’t about comparisons. It was about having a balanced diet of people in her life. And he and Fin balanced one another.

The conversation lulled, dinner was pretty much over and Fin’s socked foot nudged at Tyler under the table.

“Uh, Ky.” Tyler pushed his plate aside. He’d always hated the stomach-dropping introductions to hard topics. The I have something to tell yous. There’s something we should talk abouts. The we have to talks. So, he simply didn’t use one. He jumped right in. “Fin and I are together now. Romantically.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting Kylie’s reaction to be. But he’d kind of assumed there’d be a reaction. Her face didn’t change a whit; her eyes went from Ty to Fin and then to the table. “Okay.”

The longest three seconds of Tyler’s life passed. “Um. Nothing is going to change, really. We might see Fin a little more than usual. But for the most part, it’ll all be the same.”

“Right.”

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